While at the liberal TMZ…

[Less snarky translation: The left-leaning Internet seems to be trying to reconcile its desires to be both taken seriously politically and get pageviews!eyeballs!clicks!pageviews!eyeballs!clicks! It is the writer’s sense that this project will be as unsuccessful as the right’s attempt was to be both taken seriously politically and enrich radio and television shock jocks in the 90s.]

All of the internet news sites seem to be getting more and more click-baity every day. Even CNN changed their website dramatically, and made their headlines and many of their actual stories more click-baity. It really is obnoxious, and I can’t imagine it’s a good thing for journalism long-term.

That’s my issue exactly. It’s about left-wing sites that might post long-form journalism about social structures and systems and how to change them, but instead find that celebrity gossip, recaps of last night’s television shows, and short pieces making fun of a politician’s recent gaffe generate more hits.Report

I think you are dealing with the age old problem of audience v. seriousness.

Jacobin and N plus One in their on-line formats stick very much to the “little magazine” world view of the Partisan Review and The Nation. The number of people who read Jacobin is always going to be very small. They were called “little magazines” for a reason.

Going for a broader audience is going to demand clickbait and bills need to be paid.Report

I would agree with all of this. I just think that it’s fairly evident at this point that the Internet journalism business model is seriously broken and these sort of articles are attempts at workarounds.Report

That implies it was ever good to begin with. I think people (especially media) are still trying to work out how to make money from the whole internet thing and largely failing. Advertising on the net costs pennies as compared to advertising in Newspapers or TV. Certainly not enough to generate revenue unless one as clicks, clicks, and more clicks.Report

One of the problems may be that it is really difficult to keep producing a quality product over the long haul.

There was a point where The Atlantic had a really good lineup of bloggers on their masthead that were producing good posts pretty regularly. People get poached, people blog less, people move on to other endeavors. If you look at the folks regularly posting at The Atlantic today, they are a pale shadow of what they had a few years ago.Report

Certainly that is true, but I would say it is more an issue of demographics. In the US, it is reliably a rough 20% of the population who are actually politically sophisticated enough to understand the issues, and these tend to be the most reliable voters. Beyond that 20%, it’s mostly about branding.

The other prominent ongoing effect is that second wave progressivism (and I place its beginning at the Port Huron Statement) is founded on interest group politics, later nationalized, resulting in heavy investment in the collective representation model; which is truly recognized as “polarization,” requiring our representatives bear oaths of fealty to the greater party– in this case, purely a collection of interest groups, removed from any unifying principles (though some were cobbled together later, simply as a matter of mitigating the cognitive dissonance).

Add it together, and view it from a stream of revenue perspective, and what appears is a delicate balancing act: How to be taken seriously by the oh-so-serious people, and yet maintain enough of the reality TV / sitcom / professional wrestling aspect of it to appeal those solely concerned with branding? And how to do it while not exposing the artificial base on which rests the collective of sometimes competing interest groups?

I respectfully submit that, were the politically uninvolved truly cognizant of that delicate balancing act being acted out, it may well prove more of a draw for the reality TV crowd.Report

Hoooold up! “a rough 20% of the population who are actually politically sophisticated enough to understand the issues, and these tend to be the most reliable voters.” You want to square that statement to “but democracy” tone that’s all over this site? ‘Cause if you truly believe that, then why the hell would you support democracy when “those rubes” don’t have the sophistication to understand the issues?Report

@damon :You want to square that statement to “but democracy” tone that’s all over this site?

No. I’m not offering opinion here. I’m stating a fact.

Beyond that 18 to 23% (depending on the election being held), the majority of voters cast their ballots by means of heuristics, which falls into two main camps: partisanship, and ideology. That too is fact.

Low voter turnout is generally beneficial to American democracy. That is an inference drawn from the previous facts stated.

I’m not attempting to square anything with the truth. I’m simply speaking the truth, and saying it plainly. I really have no concern for whether it is a popular view or not. I’m more of a “Deal with it” kind of guy.Report

Will, frankly, I can’t see how anyone could be a supporter of “democracy” with those facts. You’re basically say that 80+ percent of the voters have no clue. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that they shouldn’t be voting as they just muck it up for the 20% that know what they are doing.Report

Don’t spend much time at CNN, the site or the channel. I just went over there to do a comparison between their home page and the BBC’s. Depressing doesn’t quite cover it.

There is a bit of a death-spiral at work here. Lots of outlets come to the conclusion that no one is going to pay for news and analysis so they go for viral content. And people seem to love viral, click-bait-ey content, but no one is going to pay for it, so you get a bunch of sites trying to out-bait each other for page views and ad revenues. The quality of the content goes down and down as the need to generate more of it, and worse, goes up.

You get some attempts by individual outlets to pull out of that spiral, the Atlantic and Vox come to mind, but they invariably end up right back in it.Report

I used to use CNN a lot on my phone for instant news, because their site was pretty navigable, but a couple months ago they completely changed their online model, both desktop and mobile, and it became what it is now. It was quite literally an over-night conversion.Report

Though it’s less about TPM and more about Marcotte, who is her own brand. (and who is still trying to recover from her previous brand damaging incident from using Tom Smykowski’s marvelous invention)Report

Ah, I feel bad about starting a conversation on Amanda Marcotte. Most freelancers write this stuff now. Or, at least, that’s what gets published. It’s determined largely by Internet journalism having an extremely bad business model. That’s what I was griping about.Report

Also there seems to be a fight between the left that still really wants to care about what gets labeled as “high culture” and the newer generations of liberals and leftists which don’t seem to care about high-culture at are.

For better and for worse, I think both of us belong to the liberals and leftists who really care about “high culture” and feel a certain (and probably over-romanticized) kinship to the days of the Partisan Review. One thing that I liked about TNR is that they were unrepentantly willing to give coverage to books and other cultural stuff that were not mainstream or popular. They did think that the culture pages were meant for reviewing art exhibitions and foreign movies and not the latest blockbuster or TV show.

A newer generation doesn’t seem to care about this stuff and might be openly hostile to it. You are supposed to be on Jennifer Weiner’s side, not Franzen’s side. You are supposed to care about CGI Franchises and not the upcoming Turner exhibition at the De Young because really how many people are going to that? Plus liking Turner is totally being a tool of the .1 percent.Report

Of course. Again, I don’t mean this as a comment on Amanda Marcotte’s writing or slut shaming or society’s double standards for men and women. I mean it more as a comment on an internet journalism business model that says you can write about subjects like that provided you make them “relevant” or, at least, likely to “attract eyeballs” by tying them into celebrity gossip, mass media products, or political bloopers.Report

First, this is older than internet journalism. Convincing an editor to publish something without a “why it’s timely” trigger is next to impossible. Just about every time I pitched a story to editors I worked with regularly, I expected the “Why is this timely” question, and I I was not prepared to answer that the pitch was nearly always rejected. And those few times they weren’t, my pitch evoked some thing that the editor wanted me to tie into the story; and often, that totally ruined it from my perspective. What’s more, when I submitted queries to unknown-to-me editors, my acceptance rate rapidly increased once I’d internalized working the timeliness angle into my query pitch.

Second, Marcotte points out shaming that’s usually taken as an okay, non-controversial thing to do because it’s not man shaming, and men react with what’s she upset about now instead of taking the matter into serious consideration. This is just a variation of the woman who sleeps with everyone in the band; and I’ve seen that happen, including the ensuing slut shaming stemming from the hot hot hot girl they all want to fuck when she isn’t in the room, and tempers and competition are rising because you know, she’s hot hot hot. I’m pretty sure you’ve seen some variation of this. Calling her a slut is the safe alternative to dealing with the fact that there are several people competing for her attention who have a bond (THE BAND) that that competition could easily destroy.

Slut is one of those words like thug. And Marcotte’s point that most people won’t define how many people it takes to turn you into a slut is spot on — most would say more than one; and many would say one out of wedlock. But that’s not, I think, the real definition; the real definition is woman who isn’t afraid to show she has sexual appetite.

What a freakin’ sorry place this world would be if women didn’t actually have sexual appetite, too. If they weren’t ‘sluts.’

(And I’m sorry if this sounds like a rant, it isn’t intended to be one, but there’s no non-ranty-sounding way to talk about this shit; as the constant belittling Marcotte receives reveals.)Report

Yes. That reason can be summed up by the old cliche about what the world looks like when your only tool is a hammer.

ETA: As much as I am not fond of her, I will say this for Marcotte: what she does is generally not click-bait. That is to say, she doesn’t promise some fuzzy universal message to lure you into a piece that is completely inane or a non-story. She’s guns blazing from the get go.Report

Calling men “sluts” isn’t a thing. The only time it ever comes up is when someone wants to rationalize labeling women with that word. Stop pretending otherwise.

Actually, just the other day I called Howard Stark a “man-slut”. And we were talking specifically about Starks and their callous behavior towards women, and neither I nor anyone else in the convo was labeling women with that term at all.

See, here’s the thing – if I told you I’ve slept with 4 women, you probably wouldn’t think me slutty at all.

But, if all 4 women I’ve slept with, were your colleagues in your 6-person office…well, you’d likely start to joke about whether I was even CAPABLE of keeping it in my pants.

(And here is where I must point out, again, that this is an actor, making a stupid joke about a fictional character; and I have NO IDEA how much fictional sex that fictional character has had with their fictional colleagues. I just hope everybody used fictional protection, because fictional STDs and fictional pregnancies are no joke.)Report

Eh, probably…or, I could have just said “Howard Stark is a big ol’ slut” and everyone would have understood me just fine, and no one would have been confused into thinking that I meant that the character of Howard Stark had suddenly become a woman. The word may have started out with a gendered meaning, but it now gets applied outside that original meaning. Marcotte is simply in my experience incorrect that it is always a gendered term.

And anyway, I see the word choice as kind of irrelevant to the fundamental point – like I said, if I slept with 4 of the 6 people at your job, you might not use the word “slut”; but you’d probably have *something* to say about me. I doubt this latest kerfuffle would have been avoided had Renner instead joked “boy, somebody sure gets around Avengers HQ” without actually using the word “slut”.

To be clear, I’m not saying it’s a great or hilarious joke…but assuming Renner is telling the truth about what he meant, it doesn’t seem worth a thousand thinkpieces either.Report

My wife called up the people to washing by four o’clock in the morning; and our little girl Susan is a most admirable slut, and pleases us mightily, doing more service than both the others, and deserves wages better. [Pepys, diary, Feb. 21, 1664]

Chris: if she means that we judge male sluts and female sluts differently, she’s obviously correct.

Well, I could quibble slightly over that “we”; speaking personally I’ve known both males and females who were seemingly indiscriminately-promiscuous to a fault and it caused them and others problems (and others who were either just discriminating-enough, or otherwise capable of handling it just fine), so I try not to judge sexual behavior based on gender, aside from certain practicalities when it comes to risk factors (I’m slightly less worried that a male who has a drunken one-night stand with a female he just met at the bar last night is going to be raped and murdered, than the reverse scenario. The simple fact of the matter is that I see the female as engaging in slightly-riskier behavior here; ditto with regards to unsafe sex practices – reality being what it is, she’s more likely to get the short end of the stick if things go wrong).

But I agree that modern society does generally judge males and females differently for similar behaviors – it’s just that I don’t think going the other direction and continuing to apply different standards helps. I have a hard time imagining anyone getting bent out of shape about Howard Stark being called a slut (or, some roughly-equivalent term like horndog or whatever) – why, maybe we shouldn’t be shaming that (sigh…fictional) man for having a sexual desire for near-infinite variety and acting upon it regardless of any problems it causes him or others!

Either it’s wrong to make any value judgements at all about someone’s sexual choices (even for comedic purposes), or it’s not (or, as I believe, it depends – but it shouldn’t depend on whether they are male or female. Renner made the argument that he wasn’t hinging his stupid joke upon the character’s femaleness, and unlike Marcotte, I see that as a valid argument).Report

With that I largely agree. I assume Marcotte would like to remove the word from the vernacular. I’d be fine with it being divested of its evaluative component.

On a related note longer posts/articles are just not her thing. I think her writing abilities max out at somewhere around 250 words. I finally read that whole thing and it was just not very good.Report

Actually, she’s got two problems as a writer; one is that her topic is so baked in, she’s saying the same stuff over and over (because there’s a lot of sexism and judgement about ladies and their sex lives in the world) that it’s got to be really difficult to have any sort of freshness to the sentences, let alone the paragraphs.

Second, she’s writing a lot; publishing in a bunch of places; I recognize that work load; putting out 8 to 10 pieces a week to pay the bills is not easy. You get sloppy, and don’t do enough rewriting and editing.Report

(And here is where I must point out, again, that this is an actor, making a stupid joke about a fictional character; and I have NO IDEA how much fictional sex that fictional character has had with their fictional colleagues. I just hope everybody used fictional protection, because fictional STDs and fictional pregnancies are no joke.)

The answer to this question is, in fact, none. Romanova has not slept her way through the Avengers, as far as anyone can tell. Eventually spoilers for Avengers 2:

Stark? Nope. Stark arguable hired her in Iron Man 2 because she was undercover as an attractive woman and he’s an ass, but there doesn’t seem to any point that could have happened before he ended up with Pepper.

Thor? No. Thor is completely Foster’s, and has always been since before meeting Romanova.

Barton? It was possible to argue, before Avengers 2, that him and Romanova were friends-with-benefits, or were even hiding some sort of romantic relationship. That pretty much fell apart with Avengers 2 with the revelation he’s married and she’s friends with his family.

Of course, any of those three might be having an affair with Romanova…but, uh, that sorta makes them look a lot worse than she does. And there’s no textual support for that. (OT3 pairings of her, Barton, and Barton’s wife aside.) Continuing:

Rogers? Nope. Their interaction in Captain America 2 says otherwise…I guess it’s possible that it happened *after* that, but it’s hard to see how, or even *when* there was time. And Rogers in Avengers 2 would be pretty out of character if he was just ignoring that.

This leaves Banner, the only Avenger that Romanova *could* have slept with. And, they *are* in a relationship, so, okay. Except, assuming the Edward Norton Hulk movie is still canon-ish, Banner *can’t* have sex, or at least couldn’t then. So whether or not that has happened is unknown…but it’s worth noticing that this supposedly sexual character has ended up in a relationship where sex, at the very least, presents real danger. (Not like, ‘sexy danger’, but actual real danger. God only knows how the Hulk would react if he came out during sex…he’s really only controllable to the extent you can point him at things to bash, and then try to calm him back down.) And even if Banner *can*, in theory, have sex without the Hulk showing up, would he risk it?

So that’s…*maybe* one Avenger she’s ever had sex with. Or probably not. That she’s in a relationship with. That’s it. For that, she gets called a slut, apparently.

Hell, this version of Black Widow doesn’t even use sex as a weapon, when I really think about it. She uses her *attractiveness* as a weapon, but it’s never any sort of overt sexual thing, it’s just ‘attractive and friendly women’. Maybe, barely, some slightly flirting. She certainly shows less skin than in the comic book.Report

I might or might not make this a separate post but I think another issue is that the audience for very serious and long-form journalism does not overlap much with audiences that can be sold fancy or fancyish consumer products or potentially any consumer product. I might be a bit of an overlapping Venn Diagram here by I feel like the overlap is pretty small.

My anecdotal evidence for this is based on the type of articles that people post on facebook. The kind of people who are willing to post from N plus One and Jacobin or other in-depth magazines also tend to have the most anti-consumerist views. The ones who post “lighter” news stories or Buzzfeed stuff are also likely to post stuff about new products, restaurants, breweries, and other stuff you can buy with cash and a little line like “wanna buy” “shut up and take my money”, “this looks fun”, etc.

In short, intellectuals are cheap and often proudly so. They also stereotypically are known for being at best negligent and at worst probably antagonistic to material pleasures and things. They don’t even think “cool” for a 20 dollar t-shirt with some clever or cute joke.Report

@saul-degraw I would say that almost any magazine that thinks itself a”leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture” would be at least mildly anti consumerist. And given that N+1 tends to favor Critical Theory most heavily, its probably not too far off.Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

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Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.